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Follow-up on trolls Video
Awhile ago, I made a video about dealing with trolls from the perspective of someone who makes content on the internet. I got some interesting feedback and I thought that I'd clear up some of the confusion on that video. Better late than never I guess. If it helps, here's the thought process behind my writing of that video. The internet is a surreal place with much potential. Much potential for good and much potential for evils. Most people seem to be caught up in the middle of it: expressing their opinions, finding out new that's meaningful to them, engaging in conspiracy theories, or just watching cat videos. The internet can be a fun and friendly place with the power to build lives. It can also be a dangerous and desolate place with the power to destroy lives. Of the many citizens caught in the middle of this are the trolls and their victims. Trolls are quite an interesting topic to deal with, and the only way to properly talk about them on the internet, as old mantras dictate, is simply not to talk about them. But what is a troll? Over time the definition has been marred and stretched. Urban dictionary defines a troll as "One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument ". That is a bare-bones definition at best. No matter what side of the fence you are on, trolls clearly inhabit more than message boards and newsgroups. They inhabit every corner of the internet and every foot of the darknet. In general, trolls are people who cause disruption. They say things that do nothing but "rustling people's jimmies," whether it be a specific internet personality by spamming their comment section playing the contrarian or the general populace by making videos of deliberately stupid points and claiming anyone who speaks against them isn't adhering to free speech or not caring about your opinion. Many sites detailing how to deal with trolls divide them into subcategories, with everything from spammers to stalkers. But in general, your typical internet troll will fall into three categories: the idiot, the asshole, and the comedian. The comedian is someone who trolls "for the lulz." They do it for enjoyment, and feed off of the reactions they get. This may have been where trolling started and it's original intention. Unfortunately the "idiots" will claim they're trying to be comedians, and even worse the "assholes" will hide behind the comedian excuse. Idiots are the most baffling kind of troll, especially when they're doing this intentionally. They purposefully throw poorly spelled out ad hominem attacks and could not be any more obvious in their trolling techniques. Another type of idiot is the troll who will copy and paste the same thing on each video they come across. This is the comedy equivalent of telling someone the punchline before you've told them the joke. All it does is waste people's time. The comedian will try to hide the fact that they're a troll as long as possible. Idiot trolls are easily blocked and don't tend to cause much trouble after that. There's always the chance that the idiot trolls... really are idiots and aren't doing this ironically. They're actual literal idiots. These people don't think that it's funny, but they think a direct approach is the ideal way to troll—simply calling someone "a faggot" and their goal is complete. Sometimes they're people with piss poor tempers, or can't handle someone else's opinion. Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish this from constructive criticism as there's a line between even the harshest criticism and outright trolling. There's also a line between even the most flagrant trolling and outright harassment, as we will get to. Comedian trolls are sadly getting rarer and rarer as the days go on. These types of trolls are why the mantra "Don't feed the trolls" was invented, and as a consequence, it only works on them. They are the ones that feed off of reactions—specifically getting you to waste their time. They may comment on one of your videos with seemingly earnest confusion or curiosity over something seemingly obvious that they could've overlooked to bait you in. Once you start commenting with them, they'll reel you into a strange warped logic that they've invented to specifically waste your time. That is literally the only goal of a comedian troll—to waste your time, and perhaps get you angry at them. When they're doing it in earnest. Some people do have very strange senses of logic... and it's best not to talk to them either. The only way to win against these trolls is to not feed them because, they have nothing to win and nothing to lose. They're playing a game where the goal is to stay alive as long as possible... like Flappy Bird. Last and most certainly least are the asshole trolls. This is where the lines get very thin between what's trolling and what's harassing. They bear the moniker of "troll" and it's a title that they hide behind, but it's more fitting to call them "cyber-bullies." It's also this type of troll why the "don't feed the trolls" mantra is outdated. Asshole trolls don't want to simply waste your time—they want to see you suffer, beyond making you angry or making you make a fool of yourself. If you're lucky all they want is you off the internet because they don't like your opinion, or they don't like your age, race, sex, creed, etc. Don't feed the trolls doesn't work on these guys for the same reason ignoring bullies doesn't work. If they didn't get your attention by hurling death threats at you or rape threats they'll do far worse. One technique is known as "doxxing." The asshole troll finds that anonymity is valuable, and to make someone feel vulnerable they'll take away theirs. Doxxing is a kind of "name-dropping"--dropping someone's real name, real address (physical and IP), any alternate accounts you have, and maybe an embarrassing fetish. Just in case their threats of physical violence weren't bad enough, now they have your address and have told you that they're coming to your house. A word to the wise: always use maximum privacy settings allowed. It should be safe to say that anyone who uses this technique has nothing of value to say. The sad part is that a large portion of the asshole trolls would not do this to a person in real life, even to someone they vehemently disagree with. The people who would almost certainly wouldn't act upon them either. But, it's easy to say vile things to people who our brain thinks doesn't exist. The human mind was not evolved to properly process the technological age and sometimes it's hard to personalize someone through a screen, especially someone who you don't like. It's also easier to lash out at the idea and the persona and conflate them into the same entity. When they obsess, day after day, for "removing" a person from the internet and go to excessive lengths for it they will inevitably call themselves a troll. According to them, and the majority of people, it's your fault for being uncomfortable with their constant death threats and borderline stalking. Saying that someone who posts things on the internet deserves this kind of treatment is like saying that a bench or lamp placed in a park deserves to be vandalized. It can be expected sure; it's very hard to have a public restroom with no one sharpieing profanities on the wall. But just because it can be expected, or even tolerated, doesn't mean it should be accepted. No person deserves death threats, rape threats, or having their privacy violated—especially if the only reason you are doing it is that you don't agree with them. The asshole trolls (and considering what they have and will do "asshole" is actually a very light term) are the ones who will slander people and get both the idiots and comedians to defend their slander as "fact." When someone has gotten afraid for their life due to the asshole's action, the comedians tend to feel validation, not seeming to know that this is precisely why they have such a reputation as harassers and bullies in certain singles. When you don't clean up your group of less than honorable people, their behaviors become behaviors of the group. It's common to hear that if we shut ourselves out from even the most harsh of trolling then we aren't allowing ourselves constructive criticism, when just the opposite is true. If we give equal amount of attention to the trolling as we do constructive criticism (or worse more time to the trolling), we struggle to pick out the pieces of truly valuable information and arguments. And as long as cyber-bullies can hide behind the guise of trolling there is a significant problem. Bottom line, remember that there's a person behind the online user (unless they're a spam bot). Remember, there's a person behind that user copying and pasting the same thing on every single video. There's a person each and every internet celebrity. And most unfortunately, there is a person behind the user who runs each and every hate blog. Thank you for your time. Category:Miscellaneous